However, it would be foolhardy to abandon our objectivity and criticize all Microsoft products. Not only does Microsoft make some great products, but several of them are available for you to use completely free.

Here are my picks for the Top 5 free Microsoft software products and why they are the best.

#1: Windows Live Writer

Any blogger not using Windows Live Writer (WLW) is wasting time and being unproductive. Looking for a better alternative? There is none.

WLW makes blogging a breeze on popular platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live, LiveJournal and Typepad. True WYSIWYG editing shows you previews of how your post will look. Easily upload/embed photos/videos with borders, effects, alignment, and resizing. WLW also has an extensible framework of plugins, that let you customize and extend its functionality. Check out our previous coverage of WLW to get more out of this must-have tool for bloggers.

#2: Photosynth

Microsoft Photosynth is a jaw-dropping technology that automatically stitches together your photos to create an immersive 3D view. You can explore hundreds of thousands of synths on the site, or upload your own photos to create your own synth. You can then embed your synth on your website to share with everyone. This can even be used for multiple people uploading pictures of an event. For example, here is the photosynth of Obama’s presidential inauguration made with hundreds of photographs contributed by multiple people. Below is a snapshot of a popular synth of the Statue of Liberty.

From NASA to National Geographic, you can explore fascinating 3D views of places all over the world. Photosynth uses the Seadragon technology that we’ve covered previously on MakeUseOf.

Photosynth is also integrated with Bing Maps. Over 14,000 geo-tagged photosynths comprising 1.4 million photos uploaded by users like you and me can be explored via the Photosynth Bing Maps application – easily one of the best free Microsoft software products.

#3: World Wide Telescope

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT) brings terabytes of imagery from the best ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope to your desktop. It seamlessly combines the data from these multiple sources into a rich immersive world that you can explore from your home. Use the native Windows client for all features, or the web client for a smaller subset. Guided tours from experts are a great way to introduce the stars and galaxies to youngsters. Exploration is possible not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in non-visible wavelengths such as x-ray and infrared.

The user interface and imagery use Photosynth technology and is said to be significantly better than Google Sky.

#4: Windows Live Skydrive

Windows Live Skydrive offers 25 GB of free space to anyone with a free Live ID for uploading, storing, and sharing files and photos. Most online storage services do not provide anything above 2 GB for free, and Skydrive’s 25 GB remains unparalleled. You can choose to keep files private, share them with contacts, or make them public. People are uploading 4 million photos to Skydrive every day. With Office 2010, you’ll be able to directly save a document on your PC to Skydrive.

Check out MakeUseOf’s coverage of Windows Live to get the most out of Skydrive.

#5: Bing

Bing is one of the best free Microsoft software products. While I still use Google almost exclusively myself, I have no hesitation in nominating Bing in this list of the best free Microsoft products. Why?

For starters, Bing is better than Google for certain kinds of queries. Natural language searches seem to be better in Bing. The categories and suggestions offered by Bing on the left are unique and not matched by Google. Check out these 10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side by Side and judge for yourself.

But the real reason I love Bing is because it provides competition to Google. The past decade has seen Google become a monopoly in the search business. With Bing’s increasing popularity, Google is forced to innovate. Compare the rate of feature enhancements announced by Google before and after the arrival of Bing and you will agree that Bing makes Google better. That is certainly good for all of us and the web in general.

Which are your favorite free Microsoft products? Share with us in the comments! Don’t like Microsoft? You’d be interested to read Justin’s article on The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck and chime in!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Let us now proceed with the next steps concerning Facebook privacy controls in the context of applications, friends, news feed, wall posts, groups, ads, and quitting Facebook.

#9: Control What Your Friends Can Share About You

As explained earlier, your Facebook friends can reveal information about you to applications of their choice even if you yourself do not use those applications. A typical example is when your friends use a birthday application that reminds them of your birthday so that they can send you a card or gift.

Unfortunately, this also means they reveal your religious, sexual, and political preferences as well as other personal information about you. Birthday information is also misused by financial fraudsters. All of this can be shared via more than 500,000 applications with more than 1 Million developers from over 180 countries.

If you don’t want to do that, go to Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites page. Click Edit Settings for What your friends can share about you. Choose what you want to share or uncheck all boxes for maximum privacy.

#10: Reduce Visibility of Your Facebook Friendships

Your friends list is visible to everyone on Facebook by default. Some people browse others’ friends for voyeuristic or marketing purposes. Unfortunately, Facebook now considers your friends list as “publicly available information” so there is no way to hide it completely. You can make it slightly harder for strangers to see your friend list. Go to your profile page, click the pencil icon next to your Friends box, and uncheck the Show Friend List to Everyone box.

Note that your friends list is still visible to all applications (and their developers) as well as to anyone who knows your Facebook username or ID.

#11: Remove Unused Applications

As explained in “9. Privacy From Your Applications” in the original guide, you should review the list of Applications you have authorized on Facebook and remove unused apps.

Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and review all applications listed by choosing Authorized, Allowed to Post, and Granted Additional Permissions from the drop-down.

#12: Minimize Publishing Recent Activity To News Feed

The ability to control the Recent Activity news feed on your wall as described in “5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates” in the original guide has now been removed from Facebook. Therefore, there is no way to stop notifications appearing on your wall when you add a new friend, comment on or like a friend’s status, note, photo, video, or link.

However, you can still stop certain kinds of notifications from appearing as Recent Activity on your wall news feed. This includes notifications when you become a fan of a page, are RSVPed to an event, receive a gift, join a Group, or are tagged in a photo or video. To do this, go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and change the drop-down to Allowed to Post. For each of the applications listed below, click Edit Settings, Additional Permissions and uncheck the Publish to streams box.

• Ads and Pages
• Developer
• Events
• Gifts
• Groups
• Links
• Photos & Videos

There are two additional points to note:

1. Wall-to-wall posts with a friend are only visible to mutual friends of both.
2. You can still manually Remove all Recent Activity news feed posts from your wall.

#13: Control Privacy Of Wall Posts

Your Facebook status messages can now be public and searchable from external search engines like Google. You can also set Facebook privacy controls on a per-post basis, but it’s better to set the default privacy setting for your wall posts. Go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information, and select Only Friends for Posts by Me.

Next, to control your wall privacy, go to your Profile page and click the Options link under the Share button. Then click Settings. Here, you can control whether your friends can write to your wall and who can see wall posts made by your friends.

It’s better to restrict who sees wall posts made by your friends. For example, college buddies may write things on your wall that may not be suitable for a professional audience.

#14: Hide Group Memberships In Your Profile Information

The Groups that you are a member of are listed in your profile. To remove them from your profile, go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and click Edit Settings for the Groups application.

Click (remove) to remove Group memberships from the Info section of your profile. Set the privacy level for visibility of your group memberships to Only Me.

Note that when you post a message to a Group’s wall, a notification will still be posted on your profile. This step simply makes the list of groups invisible on your Profile page Info tab.

#15: Avoid Appearing In Advertisements

There are no changes to Facebook privacy regarding advertisements, but the location to access these settings has changed. Now, go to Settings > Account Settings, and click the Facebook Ads tab.

Set both options under Ads shown by third party applications and Ads shown by Facebook to No one to avoid appearing in any advertisements on Facebook.

#16: Understand Difference Between Deactivating and Deleting Account

These privacy changes in Facebook have prompted some users to quit Facebook altogether. If you decide that Facebook is not your cup of tea, you must understand the difference between deactivating and deleting your Facebook account.

From Settings > Account Settings, you will see an option to Deactivate Account. Deactivation simply puts your Facebook account in a suspended state. All your profile information, pictures, friends, and wall posts remain intact on Facebook servers, but are not accessible to other Facebook users including your friends. You can resume using Facebook as before simply by logging into Facebook again.

If you wish to permanently delete your account, you need to submit your request on this page. This will remove all your information from Facebook’s servers, and there will be no way to access or recover your account and profile information again.

This completes our guide to how you can regain your privacy in Facebook to the extent possible, while also explaining which Facebook privacy controls are no longer available. How are these changes affecting your Facebook experience? Do you have any other tips to share? Shout out in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (77)8 Steps To Regain Control Of Your Facebook Privacy
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• (25)The Top 4 Risks You Face When You Use Facebook
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However, Facebook has updated their privacy settings and philosophy since then, which brings us to this updated guide to Facebook privacy.

In this Part 1, we will cover 8 steps to reset Facebook privacy settings – covering privacy in the context of search visibility, photos and videos, relationships and contact information.

#1: Understand The Basics: Facebook Terminology and Privacy Settings

It is important to understand the concepts used by Facebook before we proceed. Facebook uses 4 levels of privacy:

• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Custom

Everyone means everyone on the Internet, including search engines, including any user not on Facebook. Friends of Friends means all friends of everyone you have confirmed as a Friend. Only Friends means only those people you have confirmed as a Friend. The Custom setting is used to tweak privacy by including or excluding specific friends or set of friends using Friend Lists.

The new Privacy Settings Page (Settings > Privacy Settings from top menu) has the following sections:

• Profile Information
• Contact Information
• Applications & Websites
• Search
• Block List

Each section is quite self-explanatory, and it is a good idea to review your privacy level settings for each item in these sections. Key settings affecting privacy are discussed in the rest of this guide.

#2: Using the new Privacy Transition Tool

If you have not yet logged into Facebook after the privacy changes in December 2009, you will be shown a “Privacy Transition Tool” as shown below. If you have already logged in and used the tool, skip this and proceed to the next step.

On the second screen of the tool, do not accept the default suggestions provided by Facebook. For all options, to reset Facebook privacy settings just select the Old Settings option on the right as shown above, select Save Settings, and finish the Wizard. Be aware that even if you do this, several privacy settings are changed by default, so read on!

#3: Create/Review Your Friend Lists

Friend Lists continue to be the bedrock of your Facebook privacy. Creating and using Friend Lists wisely will make a huge difference in how easily you can control your privacy on Facebook. If you are not yet using them, create them right away, as explained earlier.

If you have already created them, this is a good time to review them. I find it most convenient to create buckets of Friend Lists such as Family, School/College friends, Colleagues, and Online Acquaintances but you are free to use whatever model you choose.

#4: Control Search Visibility in Facebook, Google & Other Search Engines

There are two separate settings for controlling your visibility when someone searches from within Facebook and from other search engines like Google. Access these settings from Privacy Settings > Search.

The first setting is for searches within Facebook. Change the default Everyone to Only Friends if you want only your Friends to get your information via searches in Facebook.

Facebook now considers your name, profile picture, gender, city, friend list, and fan pages as “publicly available information”. This means by default when someone searches Google with your name, they can see this information. Uncheck the Allow box for Public Search Results to prevent Googlers from seeing this information.

#5: Control Who Sees Your Photo Albums & Profile Pictures

There are no changes to Photo Album privacy settings except for the Profile Pictures Album. To set privacy for each of your Photo Albums, go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information, and click Edit Settings for Photo Albums. You will be able to choose a privacy level for each of your photo albums as before.

Earlier, all your profile pictures were visible to all your friends. Now, after the privacy changes, you can also set a privacy level for the Profile Pictures album. Note that your current profile picture remains visible to all your friends.

#6: Control Who Sees Photos & Videos You Are Tagged In

People are often embarrassed when their friends tag them in compromising photos or videos and these become visible to other folks. To control who gets to see photos and videos in which you are tagged by someone else, go to the Privacy Settings > Profile Information section, and choose the privacy setting you wish.

The Custom setting allows you to use your Friend Lists, so you can either include specific Friends or exclude Colleagues/Online Acquaintances from seeing these tagged photos/videos.

Note that this does not stop announcements with a preview thumbnail photo from appearing on your wall. To prevent these, read on.

#7: Stop Wall Notifications When A Friend Tags You In A Photo or Video

Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu and click Edit Settings for the Photos application. In the dialog box, select Additional Permissions.

Under Photos has permission to:, uncheck the Publish to streams box. Do the same for the Videos application. This will stop those wall announcements showing preview pictures/videos in which you are tagged from appearing on your wall.

#8: Control Relationship Status & Contact Information Visibility

Many people don’t want their relationship status and breakups visible to others. To control who sees your Family Members, Relationship Status, Interested In, and Looking For information, go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information and choose the desired privacy level for Family and Relationship.

If you want to set it to Only Me, choose Custom and then select Only Me from the dialog box.

Similarly, you should share your contact information cautiously, especially phone numbers and email addresses. Go to Privacy Settings > Contact Information and select privacy levels for each item. You can restrict phone number and email address visibility conveniently using Friend Lists.

In the upcoming Part 2 of this guide, we will cover steps you can take to reset Facebook privacy settings in the context of applications, friends, news feed, wall posts, groups, ads, and quitting Facebook. Have questions or other tips to share? Shout out in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (33)8 MORE Steps To Regain Control Of Your Facebook Privacy
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But that doesn’t stop us from using alternative search engines to search for people, does it? Let’s look at 5 alternative search engines that work better than Google when you are searching for people online.

It is useful to remember, that another important use of people search engines is to find out if anyone is impersonating you online. If searches for your name reveal somebody else masquerading with your identity, you can take the appropriate corrective action.

Pipl

Pipl is a people search engine that searches the deep web, which is not typically crawled by search engines like Google.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can search via name, email, username and phone number. A simple search of my name revealed some of my online profiles (LinkedIn, Windows Live), several blog posts and webpages with my name, and surprisingly, all of the online avatars I’ve used on various social networks. Similarly, a search with my username ScepticGeek also returned relevant links to all the social networks where I use that username.

If you think having pseudonyms as usernames protects your real identity, this can be an eye-opener! For more, let Karl show you how to Find A Lost Love or Friend with Pipl.

Wink

Wink is a powerful people search engine that allows you to enter several search criteria. You can search by name, location, school, work, or interests like music, TV, and movies. So if you vaguely remember a school friend named Andy who liked rock music, Wink is your best bet in finding him on the web!

Wink has hundreds of millions of user profiles in its database. As soon as you start typing a name, Wink suggests matches from its database. For better results with Wink, you should include as many details as you can. Birthdays, high school or university, company, hometown, and interests – all help refine your search and find exactly the person you seek.

YoName

Using YoName, you can search for people using their real names, usernames, email address, or phone number on 26 different social networks including popular ones like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter.

For more information about how YoName can help you find lost friends, check out 3 Ways To Find People With Social Search Engines.

PeekYou

PeekYou is a people search engine previously covered in the MakeUseOf directory. Like with Wink, you can search using real name, username, location, work, school, and interests.

I was amazed at the accuracy of PeekYou in returning relevant results for my name. Apart from social networking profiles, the results also included links to background check information, shopping, web pages and blog posts, books, and images. You can further refine your search results by location, gender, and age.

123People

As described earlier in the MakeUseOf directory, 123People shows you an aggregated web page of the complete online presence of any person.

Results include all publicly available information such as images, web pages, blogs, tweets, videos, documents, social networking profiles, and even a tag cloud!

Did we miss any of your favorite people search tools? Share them with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In this article, let us see why Faviki is an attractive social bookmarking service which makes bookmarking easier, uses smarter tags, and integrates with Delicious as well as Twitter.

What are Semantic Tags?

If you browse the “Avatar” tag in Delicious, you will find that some bookmarks refer to Avatar the movie, while others refer to Avatar as used in Twitter and Clip Art. In other words, Delicious does not know exactly what you mean when you give an “Avatar” tag to a bookmark. Whereas on Wikipedia, you can see the disambiguation page for Avatar, which shows that Avatar may be a tag that can be used for the 2009 movie, as well as for several other films, graphical representations of people, games, books, and more.

Faviki is a social bookmarking service that uses Wikipedia-style semantic tags, so your tag specifies exactly what you mean when you bookmark something. This open standard format is called Common Tags.

Why Use Faviki?

• Faviki uses universal, common tags, that have Wikipedia-defined meanings. Your world of knowledge captured in your bookmarks is universally connected and discoverable to your friends via these semantic tags.
• Tagging is simple – Faviki suggests tags automatically, also allowing you to clarify exactly what you mean.
• You do not need to switch from Delicious. You can import all your bookmarks from Delicious. Bookmarks with semantic-rich information saved in Faviki will automatically be saved in Delicious as well.
• Automatically share your bookmarks via Twitter.
• Multi-language Support: Faviki is the world’s first and only bookmarking service that supports tagging in 15 languages.

Using the Bookmarklet

Go to the Faviki bookmarklet page to install it in your browser. When you are on a web page you want to bookmark, click the bookmarklet. It shows you suggested tags for that bookmark. You are free to choose from the suggested tags and add your own by typing and selecting from the auto-complete list.

Along with tagging, Faviki also allows you to enter additional information about the bookmark. Click the “edit bookmark >” link to go to a page where you can add your own notes and copy text from the webpage to add to your bookmark. This makes it easy for your friends to discover exactly why you thought the page worth bookmarking.

Semantic Tagging At Work

Suppose I am bookmarking Susan’s article at MakeUseOf on Fedora 12. As Wikipedia shows, Fedora can mean many different things – the Linux OS, a 1978 film, or even a KGB agent! When I type “Fedora” in the tagging box of the bookmarklet, I can choose precisely what I mean:

Auto Save to Delicious, Auto Share on Twitter

Go to the Edit Profile page and enter your Delicious and Twitter account information.

You can enable auto save to Delicious and auto sharing on Twitter. You can also specify how tags with spaces, like “Google Chrome”, are handled.

Importing Delicious Bookmarks

You can import all your existing precious collection of bookmarks from Delicious. Faviki will help convert your existing tags into semantic Common Tags. Go to Import from the top menu to add your Delicious account information. After you’re done, click Import Bookmarks to start the import process. Faviki will now import your Delicious bookmarks, analyze your custom tags, and suggest equivalent Common Tags. Here is how Faviki displayed suggestions for my import:

The rows shaded in dark are the tags that you need to correct because Faviki could not find their meaning. In order to clarify what I meant with my “Films” tag, I enter “movie” and click search. Faviki presents a drop-down of search results from Wikipedia, from which I choose the correct meaning – “Film”, in this case.

Also, you can see in the above example that my “windows” tag was actually ambiguous since it could have easily meant windows in our homes. Faviki automatically suggested the correct semantic tag in this case – “Microsoft Windows”. What this means is that my MS Windows bookmarks are now easily searchable and shareable with other users interested in MS Windows. Other users who may be searching for home windows will not see these bookmarks.

Review all the dark rows and correct tags as necessary. You can click the “+” sign to expand a row and show all the bookmarks with that tag. When you are done, click the Save and initiate import button. Be patient, the importing can take a long time, and you will be notified by email. Meanwhile, you can continue using Faviki for your new bookmarks!

Does Faviki’s ability to use semantic tags appeal to you? Do you look forward to giving a whole new meaning to your bookmark collection? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Whatever the nature of your interest, it doesn’t help to start on the wrong foot. It is often necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff on the web, so here is a guide to get you started with 10 websites to educate yourself about psychology. You might also want to check out 8 Websites With Cool Free Personality Traits Tests.

#1: PsychCentral

This site is one of the largest independent psychology websites launched in 1995, providing information, resources, & hosting over 150 support groups. It was named one of 50 Best Websites of 2008 by Time Magazine and has been recognized in many noteworthy publications.

Key sections on the psychology website are:

• Mental conditions and disorders.
• Psychological tests & quizzes.
• Ask The Therapist and Q&A.
• Medication drugs library.
• Over a dozen blogs with different focus areas.
• Latest news from the world of psychology.
• Research section with information on clinical trials.
• Resources section with 4000 links; reviewed and categorized.
• Psychology book reviews.
• Community forums & weekly live chats.

#2: American Psychological Association

With over 150,000 members, the APA is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA has recently launched a newly redesigned psychology website that is attractive and easy to navigate.

• Psychology Topics offers a tag cloud view of popular topics or a list view of all topics. Each topic page leads to a page where you can find all related resources such as articles, press releases, books, videos, etc.
• Publications section is a gateway to APA’s vast repository of books, journals, databases, videos, software, magazines, brochures, reports, etc. You can browse by type of publication, or by subject.
• Psychology Help Center features articles and helpful information for daily emotional well-being. There are also specific interest areas for work/school, family, disasters, etc.
• Education section looks at the involvement of psychology in education from K-12 to post-graduate and lifelong learning.
• Careers section has resources for early career psychologists, professional development opportunities, as well as job-related information.

Whether you are interested in psychology as a layperson, student, researcher, or practitioner, this is a must-bookmark website.

#3: National Institute of Mental Health

NIMH is a Federal agency that conducts and supports research on mental illnesses.

The NIMH website features:

• Extensive information on mental health topics.
• Access to free NIMH publications on a host of topics from disorders to treatment.
• Information about clinical trials for both participants and researchers.
• Access to statistical information about mental disorders.
• News in the science of mental health.

#4: Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the largest, free, multi-lingual encyclopedia on the web has great informative articles on a variety of subjects in psychology. From the history of psychology and methods of psychological research to its numerous sub-fields of study, Wikipedia is a continuously updated treasure trove of knowledge.

Each page you navigate to has a wealth of resources from people to publications, all organized in a structured fashion unique to Wikipedia.

Also check out Psychology at Wikiversity, which has its own School of Psychology.

#5: Articles, Research, & Resources in Psychology

This is a psychology website managed by Ken Pope, Ph.D., offering free full-text articles from a variety of medical journals and a variety of other resources related to psychology. While there are many useful sections for laypersons, the information is invaluable for psychology professionals.

The site covers a broad range of subjects including licensing laws, regulation, ethics, medication, military related issues, suicide and sexual issues, etc. A unique feature that deserves mention is that the website is designed for people with disabilities in accordance with W3C Accessibility Guidelines.

While the sites above offer comprehensive resources for anyone even remotely interested in psychology, the following websites are useful especially for non-professionals interested in learning about psychology.

#6: WebMD Mental Health

WebMD’s Mental Health section has exhaustive information on disorders and treatment. It features Guide sections for specific disorders, with informative slideshows, latest news, and articles. All this is backed by the popular community section featuring blogs and message boards.

#7: About.com Psychology

This website is part of the About.com network, and offers easy-to-read articles on psychology. Many different topics are covered from theories and sub-fields to career and education.

#8: Psychology Today

Psychology Today is the website of the bi-monthly magazine. The site focuses on mental well-being and is geared towards therapy and treatment for mental illnesses. The content is easy-to-read and focused on non-professional laypersons.

#9: PsyBlog

Maintained by a researcher Jeremy Dean, this blog is based on scientific psychology and is one of the best individual psychology blogs. Articles focus on understanding how our minds work and why we think and act the way we do.

#10: BBC Science & Nature: The Mind

The Mind section in BBC’s Science & Nature psychology website is fun and informative to explore.

It has facts, surveys, and interactive features that teach you about different things like the brain, emotions & instincts, intelligence & memory, mental disorders, etc.

The world of psychology is very vast indeed. Will these websites help to educate yourself about psychology? Are there any of your favorite sites we missed? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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CompareMyDocs comes to our rescue in such situations. You can check out their demo video in our coverage of CompareMyDocs in the MakeUseOf Directory. It might sound unbelievable, but you don’t need to sign up or even register to use this incredible web app that lets you compare documents online – just use it for free! In this article, let us consider a life-like scenario and see how it works in detail.

A Collaboration Example

Our loyal readers have been helping us test the new MakeUseOf theme. Suppose we had an internal status report being passed around on the various tasks involved. Such a status report is a good example of real-life document collaboration. In this case, we would have Mark, our Managing Editor, send out a blank template and ask everyone to update the document with details of the status of their tasks. Earlier, there were two possible scenarios:

Scenario #1: Mark sends the document to one team member, gets an updated version back, then sends it to the next team member to get her update, and so on. Needless to say, Aibek, our Editor-In-Chief, would be fuming by the time Mark had consolidated the distributed MakeUseOf team’s inputs.

Scenario #2: Marks sends out the document to all of us, and we all update it as soon as it’s convenient for us and send it back. Mark then opens two documents at a time in MS Word, consolidates the changes, then opens the third one. As you can imagine, with a team of over 30, Mark would spend hours in preparing a consolidated status update.

I am sure you must have encountered both these situations very often. Enter CompareMyDocs.

In Scenario #2, Mark has multiple versions of the same document. Let’s say he has received 3 updated versions, aside from his original:

Uploading Documents

Mark goes to CompareMyDocs and uploads the documents. You can upload any .doc, .docx, or .rtf documents up to 7 at a time.

After clicking Compare, CompareMyDocs scans all document versions for changes. After a few seconds depending upon the size of the document and number of changes, the changes by each team member are shown in a different color like this:

Reviewing Changes

Shown on the right are all the differences in each version by different authors. Roll-over of the mouse lets you Accept, Scrap, Hide, or Reject each change. Scrapping a change turns it into a Comment or Note.

So if Mark accepts this change as shown above, the document is updated after merging that change:

Merging and Saving

Once Mark has finished reviewing all the changes by accepting, or rejecting them, he clicks Save on the toolbar to download the final consolidated version.

Additional Goodies

• CompareMyDocs supports basic editing and formatting of documents right within the browser interface.
• An Adobe AIR based desktop version called TextFlow will be released soon, so that you can even work on multiple document versions offline.
• The company has also launched an API for this collaborative editing functionality. It would be interesting if cloud storage services like DropBox, who support versioning, integrate with the TextFlow API.

Whether the collaboration is between students for a thesis, teachers for a curriculum, team members for a status report, or anything else you can imagine, CompareMyDocs can become an indispensable tool anywhere people collaborate on documents. You can also check out our other articles on collaboration or the free collaboration tools listed in our directory.

Will CompareMyDocs optimize your collaboration workflow? Do you think this is a unique service? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Here are 10 solid Twitter safety tips you can make use of to enjoy Twitter and protect yourself.

#1: Never Share Personal Information

This has to be the first and foremost guideline and cannot be stressed enough. Never share your email, personal or business address, telephone numbers, etc. on Twitter unless you are absolutely sure what you are doing.

Geotagging is an optional Twitter feature that makes your exact location public. If you do not wish to automatically broadcast your physical location, make sure that the setting is disabled in your Twitter settings.

#2: Review Applications That Use Your Twitter Account

Avoid web-based applications that ask you to supply your Twitter username and password. Well behaved applications use Twitter OAuth and do not ask you to provide your Twitter password.

Regularly review the list of applications you have authorized to access your Twitter account via the Twitter Settings Connections page. Remove all applications from that list that you no longer need or use.

#3: Regularly Change Your Password

Automated bots are used by hackers to gain access to your Twitter account. Use strong passwords and keep changing your password every 4-6 weeks to ensure maximum safety. You can use these 5 Free Password Generators for Nearly Unhackable Passwords or Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily.

#4: Preview Short URL’s Before Clicking

Shortened URLs are often used to hide unsafe web addresses. Clicking and visiting unsafe websites leads to dangers of malware, phishing websites, etc. When using Twitter clients like TweetDeck, turn on the “Show Preview Information for Short URLs” option. If you are using Firefox, you can use extensions like LongURL Mobile Expander or DeTiny URL Expander. Another option is to use bookmarklets and scripts like Unhid and Untiny.

#5: Beware Of Unsolicited DMs

Phishing attacks often use Direct Messages to lure unsuspecting users to a login page where they are asked to provide their username and password. The problem is that you may receive such a DM from a trustworthy user you are following, whose account has been compromised. Hence, there is no foolproof way to ascertain whether a DM is authentic or suspicious.

You should use your judgment and discretion while clicking URL’s in DMs. If there is any reason to suspect that the DM is strange or weird in any way, simply delete it and let the user know. Follow the Twitter Spam account for regular updates and information on Twitter scams.

#6: Use Private Twitter Accounts

If you are using Twitter to communicate among a chosen group of friends, colleagues, or family, consider making your Twitter feed private. This can also be a recommended option for youngsters on Twitter. To make an account private, go to your Twitter Settings, and select the “Protect my tweets” option.

#7: Block & Report Spam

If you receive spam via @replies, block and report the account as spam. Many Twitter clients let you do that from within their interface. You can follow the Twitter Spam account and send a direct message with the name of the account to report a spammer. Manage your followers and friends as discussed in 12 Solid Tips to Enhance Your Twitter Reputation to reduce your spam.

#8: Avoid Account Suspension By Respecting Twitter Limits

Ensure that you adhere to Twitter’s Best Practices for Following Limits. These are especially important when using automated tools to tweet or follow/unfollow users. Violating follow limit rules may lead to suspension of your Twitter account. The key limits to be aware of are:

• Limit of maximum 1000 tweets and 250 DMs per day.
• Aggressively following or unfollowing hundreds of users within a day can lead to account suspension.
• You need sufficient followers before you can follow more than 2000 users.

Do not use any service or application that promises to get you “hundreds of followers quickly”. These are guaranteed ways of making your Twitter account suspicious and lead to your account being suspended.

#9: Avoid Being Impersonated

Twitter permits impersonation only for parody. Even if you don’t use Twitter at all, someone else may be using your name to impersonate you on Twitter. This can lead to grave reputation problems for your business, professional and personal life.

If you come across any Twitter account impersonating you in an illegitimate fashion, submit a web request on Twitter from the Support page and choose “Impersonation” in the “Regarding” drop-down. You can also send an email to impersonation@twitter.com supplying details listed here.

#10: Use An Anti-Virus and Firewall

Finally, no list of safety tips would be complete without a reminder to protect your computer using firewalls and an up-to-date anti-virus. Check MakeUseOf’s extensive coverage of free Anti-Virus software and Security articles to safeguard your computer when using online applications like Twitter.

Are there any other tips we missed? Will these help you to keep your Twitter account safe? Shout out in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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DNS: A Backgrounder

In simplified terms, Domain Name Servers (DNS) are translators that convert website names to IP Addresses. When you click on a bookmark, hyper-link, or enter an address like www.makeuseof.com in your browser, the browser sends that name to a DNS Server that helps route the request to the appropriate IP Address of that URL. Think of this as your letter for “John Doe” being sent to his correct home address.

When your ISP configures your Internet connection, it is set to use the ISP’s DNS service. However, you are free to use other alternatives, as Karl explained in Open DNS Works Great As A Free Web Content Filtering Solution. Thus, you can use Open DNS or the new Google Public DNS, to replace your ISP’s DNS.

Why should you use something other than what your ISP gives you for free? As you can see, Open DNS offers rich content-filtering options for privacy and family safety. Google Public DNS has been engineered by Google for faster performance and better security. However, because of the complex variables involved, no single option can be said to be the best for all when it comes to speed. So how do you find out which DNS is the fastest for you? Enter NameBench, a free tool to help you find the fastest DNS for you.

Introducing NameBench

NameBench is a portable application (no installation!) that works across the Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms. It runs a benchmark test on your computer, using either your web browser’s history or a standardized test data set to find out which DNS service returns the fastest results for your location. Download and run the application from the Google Code repository here.

Starting the NameBench Test

Before you run NameBench, make sure you have closed all applications using the Internet. This will ensure that the results are not distorted by interference from other programs using your network bandwidth. Then, launch the application, and you will see a screen like this:

The Nameservers at the top shows the DNS servers you are currently using. If you are not interested in technical details, simply click “Start Benchmark”. The test takes between 10-20 minutes, so you can take a coffee break while it runs.

NameBench Results

After the test is complete, your browser launches to show you the results. At the very top are the main results (in this case, showing that my ISP’s DNS is hopelessly slow):

At the right, you can see which DNS service works the fastest for you. To change your DNS configuration, you can follow the instructions at the Google Public DNS site, using the recommended configuration from the test, instead of Google’s Public DNS.

NameBench Options Explained

NameBench includes public DNS providers like OpenDNS and UltraDNS in its test via the first checkbox. The “Include best available regional DNS services” option tests the health and response time of over 1000 DNS servers worldwide so that it can include those that are close to you and may be the fastest. Leave both options checked for best results.

The “Benchmark Data Source” drop-down will give you the option of choosing your browser history or a standardized data set of the top 10,000 Internet websites. Many of those websites would be foreign-language ones that you never visit, so keep the default option and use your browser history for the test.

Using the “Benchmark Data Selection” mode, you can choose a random or sequential set of websites from your browser history. The default “Weighted” mode uses more of your recent browser history and is the best option for most users. Finally, the Number of tests represents how many requests will be sent to the servers, and should be kept over 100, preferably 150-200. Running the test more than once with “Number of runs” > 1, will result in DNS caching being used for subsequent runs if you want to test performance with and without caching.

NameBench Results In Detail

The Tested DNS Servers table shows a list of the DNS Servers that were used for the test, with the corresponding response times, notes, and errors if any. NameBench allows a maximum of 10 DNS servers at a time.

This graph shows the average and fastest response times for the top 5 servers.

Finally, this pretty graph shows the percentage of times a response was received from a server within the first 200 milliseconds.

Grab your free download of NameBench and run the test. You may be surprised by the results! Did you change your DNS servers after using it? Is your web browsing faster as a result? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Timo Elliott of SAP Web 2.0 has developed several free Powerpoint Twitter tools. Download the tools for MS Office from the download page for your version of MS Office and unzip the archive. You need PowerPoint 2003 or 2007 and Adobe Flash to use them. Note that these Powerpoint Twitter tools are free prototypes with limited support.

Auto Tweet Notes From PowerPoint Presentations

AutoTweet is a PowerPoint Add-in that automatically tweets Notes from your presentation. First, you need to install the Add-in to PowerPoint. Go to the Office Button, and click PowerPoint Options > Add-Ins.

From the Manage drop-down, select PowerPoint Add-ins, and click Go…. In the Add-Ins dialog, click Add New, and select the AutoTweet.ppam PowerPoint Addin file that you unzipped from the downloaded archive. After you see the AutoTweet add-in installed with a checkbox, close the dialog.

Next, open the presentation in PowerPoint, and go to the Add-Ins tab on the ribbon. In the Menu Commands on the left, you will see AutoTweet. Click this to bring up a dialog where you can enable or disable AutoTweet and enter your Twitter username and password. You can optionally add a hashtag to your tweets and choose to get a successful tweet confirmation while presenting.

This tool auto tweets the Notes from each slide in your presentation. However, you might have some additional content in your Notes not meant to be tweeted. For this purpose, the tool only tweets text that is enclosed in brackets: [twitter] this text will be tweeted [/twitter]. For example, here is how I made my note to be automatically tweeted during my presentation.

Here is how the tweet appeared on Twitter with the #hashtag specified in the dialog automatically added by the tool:

Remember that each time you run a slideshow of this presentation, the tool will send out tweets on your Twitter account! If you wish to practice delivering your presentation, turn AutoTweet Off in the settings dialog before running your practice slideshow. Also, in order to use the next feature we are going to discuss, it would be a good idea to tweet an instruction in the beginning to the Twitter audience to use a specific hashtag while tweeting about your presentation. We will see how you can use this to gather feedback in the next section.

Show Feedback From Twitter in PowerPoint

Another useful tool in this pack is a slide that allows you to automatically display a tweet cloud in your presentation with search terms you can specify. Most Blog Camps and Conferences today use a specific hashtag for tweets about it, for example #140conf or #leweb. If you are presenting at a Blog Camp or Conference, you can use the hashtag as your search term to get real-time feedback from Twitter to show within your PowerPoint presentation. You can use this as a way to discuss the feedback with the audience, or simply as an engaging display in between different sessions.

To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. Open the powerpoint_twitter_tools.pptx presentation from the downloaded archive.
3. Navigate to Slide 4: “PowerPoint Twitter Feedback Slide 1”.
4. Click on the slide content visible as a large “X”, and Copy it to the clipboard.
   
5. In your presentation, go to a blank slide where you want to display the feedback and Paste.
6. Adjust the size of the empty feedback placeholder to suit the template and style of your presentation.

Now, when you run the slideshow of your presentation and navigate to the Feedback Slide, you will see a blank feedback slide with instructions in the center. Enter the search term in the box on the bottom left and press Enter. Tweets from Twitter containing the search term will automatically be shown in the slide. For example, here is how the chatter on Twitter about the #LeWeb conference looks like:

You can click on the Twitter avatar or the tweet cloud to open a browser window that displays the Twitter profile or tweet. To move forward in your presentation, you need to click the title or side area outside the content area you pasted. The slide refreshes by itself after 30 seconds and you can view history using the page navigation arrows. Also check out Slide 5 from the downloaded presentation which displays tweets in a grid layout.

Now, the next time you present with the help of AutoTweet, you will no longer be clueless about what people are tweeting about your presentation! Also, your tweets themselves will be a part of all the tweets on Twitter making you an active participant.

Will you use these Powerpoint Twitter tools for your next presentation? Do you think this will make your presentation cool? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Making your blog or website language-friendly is not at all difficult. In this article, let us see how you can use free translation widgets on your site to allow visitors to instantly translate your website into the most popular foreign languages. If you want to let users subscribe to translated RSS feeds of your website, you should check out Mloovi. Let’s see how to use the Google Translate Gadget and the Microsoft Translator Widget and see how they compare.

Translate Your Website with Google Translate Gadget

Google Translate Gadget is powered by Google Translate Tools, and supports over 50 languages. The “gadget” is nothing but a short code snipped that you can place anywhere on your website. If you have a blog, the best place for the gadget is your blog’s sidebar. As an example, we’ll assume you have an English website powered by Wordpress. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Google Translate Tools and choose the language of your website.
2. If you wish, you can restrict which languages you want to support. It is best to use the default All languages option.
3. Copy the code snippet shown on the page.
4. In your Wordpress Dashboard, paste the code in a Text Widget in your Appearance > Widgets section and add it to your sidebar.

That’s it! Your blog can now be read in over 50 languages.

When users who have set a different default language in their browser visit your blog, they are prompted to automatically translate your website to their native language. You can also check how your blog looks in different languages.

Also, when a translated page is viewed, moving your mouse over the translated text paragraph pops up the original text. You can conveniently compare the original and the translated text in this way.

Microsoft Translator Widget

The Microsoft Translator Widget supports over 20 languages. This is the same translation engine that is used in MS Office, Bing, and the Messenger translation bot we previously covered on MakeUseOf. To use the Microsoft Translator Widget, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Microsoft Translator Widget page.
2. Enter your website or blog URL address and the language of your site.
3. Choose the widget of the widget as suitable for your blog. You can experiment back and forth if you need.
4. Choose a suitable color based on the theme of your blog.
5. Check the “I agree to the terms of use” box, and click Generate code to get the code snippet.
6. Copy paste the code snippet in a Text Widget in your blog sidebar.

That’s it! Your blog can now be read in over 20 languages. Just like the Google Translate Widget, when a translated page is viewed, the original text is visible on mouse rollover. Here is how the widgets look in the blog sidebar when stacked on top of each other:

Which Widget Should You Use?

Choosing the right widget for your website may not be a simple matter of comparing the number of languages supported. Here are factors you can consider:

• Obviously, the Google Gadget gives you the widest reach because it supports far greater languages (50 vs. 20)
• The Google Gadget auto-detects the user’s language and prompts the user to translate
• The Microsoft Widget supports different colors to suit your blog theme, while the Google Gadget has the classic minimalist look
• The Microsoft Widget has a width option and looks different depending upon the size you choose
• Lastly, the Microsoft Widget supports “Progressive Rendering”, which means web pages show up in the translated language in incremental fashion. Users do not need for the complete page to be translated before they start reading. This is useful if you have long pages of text.

You might also want to check out ConveyThis, which takes a different approach by popping up a dialog letting users choose from different online translation services.

Needless to say, machine (robot) translation has its limitations. Nevertheless, it can surely make your webpage comprehensible to foreign language users, who might otherwise quickly jump to another website. Will you try using these free tools on your site? Do they work well on your blog? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Beyond this simplicity however, there are some cool things you can do to unleash the power of the platform. In this article, let us look at some Posterous tips for power users.

Posterous Tip #1: Use Posterous on a Subdomain

The Posterous Help describes how you can set it up on your custom domain. But what if you use Wordpress or Blogger to power the main blog of your site? In this case, it makes sense to setup Posterous on a subdomain of your site.

If your site is www.yourname.com, you can setup posterous.yourname.com as your Posterous site. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Setup the subdomain as you wish on your domain using tools provided by your domain host. Typically these will be part of your Control Panel or Dashboard.
2. Add a CName Record: “posterous.yourname.com. IN CNAME posterous.com.” You may have to ask your domain hosting support to do this for you.
3. Specify the subdomain in Manage > Settings.

Posterous Tip #2: Selective Autopost

Beyond posting your email and other media to your Posterous blog, you can set it up to automatically post to other services as well.

To enable Autopost, go to Manage > Autopost and add the services you wish. Now, when you email post@posterous.com, your post is automatically sent to all the services you have configured under Autopost settings.

There are times when you don’t want to autopost everywhere. There is no need to change your settings just for such instances. You can selectively autopost, by tweaking the email address.

As an example, suppose you have configured Facebook, Flickr and Twitter under your Autopost settings. Let’s say you use Flickr for all your cool outdoor photographs and prefer Facebook for photographs of people at conferences you attend. You also want to tweet when you post any photos anywhere. When emailing your photos, send your outdoor nature photography to flickr+twitter@posterous.com, and send conference photos to facebook+twitter@posterous.com.

Posterous Tip #3: Advanced Facebook Autopost

By default, Posterous does not post your photos and videos to your Facebook photo albums and videos. For more fine-grained control over how Posterous auto-posts to Facebook, on the Autopost settings page, go to Edit under Actions for the Facebook service.

First, choose whether you want Posterous to actually update your Facebook status message, or simply update your activity stream. Then, you can choose to enable autoposting of photos and videos if you wish. The Minimum gallery size determines the number of photos that creates a separate Facebook album.

Posterous Tip #4: Advanced Bookmarklet Settings

Using the bookmarklet is almost a must to make the best use of Posterous. The bookmarklet makes it very simple to instantly post text, documents, pictures, music or video from any web page to your Posterous.

From the Advanced Options link at the bottom of the bookmarklet, you can also include tags and choose whether to autopost that item to your other services.

Posterous Tip #5: Use Google Analytics to Track Traffic Stats

Bring the awesome power of Google Analytics to your Posterous blog to see detailed traffic stats. Here’s how:

1. If you haven’t sign up for Google Analytics with your Posterous site URL.
2. Get the Google Analytics Domain ID for your site, which looks like “UA-123456-1” with different numbers.
3. Enter the Domain ID in Manage > Settings > Analytics in Posterous.

Now you can see page views, average time spent on site, referring sites, and a plethora of other traffic stats.

Posterous Tip #6: Use Feedburner For Your Posterous RSS Feed

You can replace the default RSS Feed provided by Posterous with a Feedburner one. With Feedburner, you can keep track of the number of your RSS subscribers, create browser-friendly feeds, add social bookmarking links, and lots more.

To use Feedburner with Posterous, follow these steps:

1. Get your Posterous Feed URL (seen on the right of your Posterous blog).
2. Burn that feed in Feedburner and copy the feed address you create.
3. In Manage > Settings > Analytics, specify the part of your Feedburner URL after http://feeds.feedburner.com/.

You now get all the benefits of using Feedburner for your Posterous RSS Feed.

These are some of the ways to get more out of Posterous. Have other Posterous tips to share? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Lazy to build a List? You can auto-create a Twitter List of people you converse with. If you are an avid RSS feed reader, wouldn’t you like to import Twitter Lists into Google Reader? How about embedding a List Widget on your blog? Finally, some fun stuff to show what your Twitter Lists say about you!

#1: Auto Create a “Conversation List”

A “Conversation List” is an automatically generated Twitter List of people you talk to and mention on Twitter. The list is updated daily, and contains a maximum of 25 people. If you stop talking to someone, they automatically drop off the list.

Go to Conversationlist.com, and click the highlighted text to authorize it to access your Twitter account. You will get four options to further personalize your Conversation List:

1. Whether it should include people you @Mention OR only those you @Reply to
2. Set minimum number of conversations for inclusion
3. List of people to always exclude
4. List of people to always include

If you ever want to discontinue using this List, simply delete it from Twitter. Conversation Lists can become a great discovery tool, as others can find out who you converse with on Twitter. In this way, by building a Conversation List, you are helping your followers discover people you find interesting to talk to or mention.

#2: Use Twitter Lists Widget On Your Blog

A great place to show off your Twitter Lists is your blog. Twitter now has a widget especially for Twitter Lists. Go to the Twitter Goodies Widgets section on the site, click My Website, and then List Widget.

Here you can select the List, customize it’s settings, appearance, and dimensions. Click Finish & Grab Code after you’re done to get the script that you can embed on your blog or website. It looks cool on blog sidebars.

#3: Read Twitter Lists in Google Reader

If you prefer RSS feed readers to Twitter, you can make use of Twitter Lists just like you do with Google Reader bundles. For importing Twitter Lists into Google Reader, you need an RSS feed for the list, which Twitter doesn’t provide. Google Reader enthusiast Alex Kessinger has come to the rescue by creating a nifty Twitter Lists to RSS application.

On the Twitter Lists to RSS webpage, enter the URL of your Twitter List, and it will generate an RSS feed for you.

There are other things you can do with RSS besides reading in Google Reader. If you are blogging on Wordpress.com, you can’t use the Twitter List widget described above. Using RSS, you can use the RSS feed widget on your Wordpress.com blog. If you are a power user, you can setup a FriendFeed Group of Twitter Lists enabling the powerful FriendFeed search for Twitter Lists.

#4: What Do Twitter Lists Say About You?

This is fun stuff. Assuming you’ve been added to a bunch of Twitter Lists as I am, all these lists have names given by people. MustExist List Tags is a cool app that automatically creates a tag cloud of words based on the names of the Twitter Lists that you are part of. This can be representative of how you are perceived on Twitter by those who have included you in their Lists.

Go to MustExist List Tags, and enter any Twitter username to get a list tag cloud. On the right of the tag cloud, you will see the top lists that you are part of, based on the number of followers of each list. This is the best and quickest way to check out the most popular lists that a user is part of, since Twitter doesn’t let you sort list memberships in any way.

Do you use Twitter Lists and how are you making the best out of it? Any interesting Twitter Lists you’d like to share? We do! Follow our “MakeUseOf staff” Twitter List to see what our writers are tweeting about!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Fishbowl is a clean, fast, and amazingly simple Facebook client that works on Windows XP/Vista/7 with the .NET Framework 3.5. It is an experimental demo project by Microsoft, available for free download here. It supports most of the common Facebook functionalities such as browsing feeds and photos, updating status, and uploading photos. On Windows 7, you get Jump Lists, taskbar previews, and multi-touch support as well.

Main Window: Status & News Feed

When you launch the Fishbowl Facebook client, it shows you your Facebook news feed. You can navigate between different views using the toolbar at the top. The number of notifications are shown on the toolbar itself in a red-circle.

On the left are the familiar Friend Lists, and links to Photos, Pages, Notes, etc. You can zoom in and out of the view using the +/- buttons on the top right. Likes and Comments work just like in Facebook.

On the top left is a box where you can set your Facebook status. You can also attach links or photos to your status from here.

Browsing Friends

You can browse friends in multiple ways. Sort by display name, last name, their last status update, or upcoming birthdays.

There is an interesting new element introduced by the Fishbowl Facebook client that is not in Facebook: “Interest Level”. You can adjust your interest level for your Facebook friends within Fishbowl, which you can then use while browsing your friends, their photos, etc.

Browsing & Uploading Photos

You will just love to browse photos in Fishbowl! Slick, snappy, and fast. Browse albums sorted by last updated, album title, name of your friend, or your Interest Level. You can save entire albums to disk in one click, or sit back and watch a full-screen slideshow of the album.

You can scroll through the photos in an album using the mouse scroll-wheel, zoom in and out of photos, and save or print photos.

For uploading photos, use drag and drop or browse and select. As you will discover, photo browsing and photo uploading are the coolest features of the application!

Mini Mode & Win 7 Goodies

You can use the Fishbowl Facebook client as a light-weight notifier of new items in your feed, or for new Facebook notifications. The “Mini Mode” brings up a transparent window that tucks away unobtrusively on the side. You can quickly jump to any specific status update or see your notifications as they come in.

Fishbowl takes advantage of Windows 7 features to provide nice little goodies. You can directly jump to specific sections like news feed, friends, photos, etc. from within the live thumbnail preview. Even when the program is not running, the Jump List provides the same functionality.

Application Settings

By default, Fishbowl opens external links in the Facebook newsfeed within its own window, using Internet Explorer. If you wish to use a different, faster browser to display external web pages, you can specify that in Fishbowl settings, which are accessed from the gears icon on the main window toolbar.

Do you think the Fishbowl Facebook Windows client makes a nice desktop companion to Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Let’s see how you can make use of this exciting new Twitter feature!

Popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic have supported creating Groups of users. However, these Groups were specific to the client and could not be transferred if you changed your client. Lists are the “official” Twitter Groups, meaning that once you create a Twitter List, you will be able to follow it from any client that supports Twitter Lists. Almost all the Twitter clients will eventually support Twitter Lists, with Seesmic Beta and Brizzly already doing so.

The advantages of using Twitter Lists are:

• Ability to follow specific people more closely
• Ability to follow a set of brands, blogs, companies, or news sources
• Ability to follow types of people like tech bloggers, celebrities, sport teams, politicians
• If you simply follow Lists created by others, you don’t need to maintain and update the List yourself

In this article, we will see how you can create and follow Twitter Lists using Twitter’s web interface.

Create a List

It is simple to create a list. On the Twitter homepage, you will see a Lists section below the search box, with a New List link. Clicking it brings up the Create a new list dialog.

Specify a name for the list, which will used for creating the list URL. If you use spaces in the name, they are converted to dashes. So a list named “my good friends” gets a URL of twitter.com/yourname/my-good-friends.

Public lists are visible to everyone and anyone can follow them. Private lists you create are only visible to you, and not even visible to the members of the list. Once you click the Create list button, you have created an empty list. Next step is to add members to the list.

Add/Remove Members

There are multiple ways in which you can add people to a list. Once you create a list, Twitter shows you a Find People search box to add people to your newly created list.

Alternatively, you can add people to a list from their Twitter profile page. All Twitter profile pages now include a Lists button that you can use to add or remove people from a list.

Another way is to add people to a list from your own or anyone else’s Following or Followers pages. Each user in the list of following or followers has a Lists button that you can use as shown below.

As you can see, you can also use any of the above 3 ways to create a new list and add the corresponding user at once. In the same way as adding people, you can also use any of the 3 ways to remove people from a list. On the list page, you can Edit or Delete a list from the links at the top right.

Follow a List

Suppose you want to follow all the MakeUseOf writers on Twitter. On the MakeUseOf Twitter profile page, you will see @MakeUseOf/staff under the Lists section on the right. Clicking it takes you to the @MakeUseOf/staff List page.

From here, click Follow this list to follow the list – simple!

Once you start following a list, you will see a link to it in the Lists section on the right on your Twitter home page. Click on it to see the tweets from members of that list. As in the above screenshot, you can see how many people a list follows and how many people follow the list.

Discover Cool Lists

The best place to discover cool lists is Listorious, a third-party website that tracks popular lists.

You can find the most popular Twitter Lists on different subject areas. Lists are categorized using tags into sections like News, Art, Sports, Politics, Humor, Health, etc. Of course, if you have friends on Twitter, you can always see which lists they are following as well.

Are you excited about this new Twitter feature? Share your favorite lists with us in the comments and don’t forget to follow the MakeUseOf staff list!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In this article, let us look at Free FLV Converter, a simple freeware application you can use to convert FLV videos to AVI.

Free FLV Converter is developed by Koyote Soft, and can also be downloaded from CNET Downloads. Free FLV converter can download embedded FLV (or SWF) videos directly from the Internet, and can convert FLV to AVI, iPod (MPEG4 or H.264), iPhone, 3GP, PSP, or MP3 audio only. Conversely, it can also convert videos from other formats (DivX, XviD, MpeG, DVD, and AVI) to FLV.

Installation

Download and run the setup program to install the software. It is a light-weight download at 6MB, compared to most other video converters, and does more than just convert videos as we shall see. The only thing you would want to take care of during installation, is to avoid installing the Dealio toolbar. This is a “bloatware” toolbar that is promoted to support this freeware application, but you can easily opt out of installation by deselecting the two checkboxes during setup. Select your preferred language the first time you launch the program.

Convert FLV To AVI

Let’s say you have already downloaded a video in FLV format to your PC and want to convert it to AVI. On the Free FLV Converter toolbar, click the Conversion from FLV button.

This will bring up a Select File Dialog from which you should select the FLV video file you wish to convert. A conversion window opens up showing the file to be converted at the top, and settings to be used for the conversion at the bottom. Click the Convert button at the bottom to convert the file.

You can customize the conversion settings if you wish. You can choose the output format, output quality, and location of the output video file in the Output configuration section. The video and audio sections allow you to set advanced settings for the codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, bit rate, etc. The default settings work fine if you don’t want to dive into technical details.

From this dialog itself, you can click the “+” button at the top to add more files to convert multiple videos in batch mode. The program shows you a preview while converting. The speed of conversion is quite fast, and the program did not slow down my PC or interfere with other applications, thus working very efficiently.

Convert To FLV

In much the same way as converting FLV to other formats, you can also use Free FLV Converter to convert other video formats to FLV. Just click the Conversion to FLV button on the toolbar, select the file to convert, and you get a FLV file that you can embed on your website. You also get a HTML webpage created automatically with the embedded video.

Search Videos

You can use Free FLV Converter to search for videos on popular video sharing websites without opening your browser. Click the Search button on the toolbar to search for videos. You can select websites like YouTube, Google, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, etc. from the Site drop-down list, enter your search terms, and click Search.

The search results are shown in the right pane. You can play, download, or go to that video’s page on the site. You can multi-select and download multiple videos at once.

Download Videos

If you already know the URL for a certain video that you wish to download, click the Tube downloader button on the toolbar. Here you can enter the URL of the video page that you wish to download.

You can also load a text file containing a list of URLs of videos you want to download.

For a freeware application, Free FLV Converter’s feature set is very impressive. Are you familiar with any other freeware FLV to AVI converter? Share with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In this article, we’ll see how you can add free animation for your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

PowerPoint Animation Basics

It is useful to understand the four basic types of free animations for PowerPoint:

• Entry: used to introduce animated objects on a slide
• Emphasis: used for emphasizing elements already present on a slide
• Exit: how objects move off the slide
• Motion Path: move objects in a specified path on the slide

Now let us see some simple ways you can add animation to your presentation.

Use Preset Animation for Text or Objects

To animate any object (text, shape, etc.), do the following:

1. Select the object you wish to animate

2. On the ribbon, select the Animations tab.

3. Choose an animation effect from the Animation drop-down.

Use Custom Animation for Text or Objects

For fine-grained control, click the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane on the right.

Clicking the Add Effect button brings up a menu with four types of animations from which you can select the one you like. You can also add multiple animation effects, and see them added to a numbered list in the task pane. To remove any of them, select the animation from the list and click Remove. As you add animation effects, you will see numbered tags added beside the object you have selected.

You can further customize each animation effect using the three drop-downs. Start specifies whether the effect starts upon a mouse-click, starts simultaneously with the previous one, or starts after the previous one. The second drop-down depends on the effect and is used for customizing direction or other properties specific to that effect. The Speed drop-down selects the speed with which the effect is applied.

For advanced customization, right-click an effect in the list to bring up the context menu. Select Effect Options from the context menu to bring up a dialog box with more options to customize the effect.

You can reorder effects within the list using the Re-Order arrows at the bottom, and click Play to preview your animation.

Add Transitions Between Slides

Animations between two slides are called Transitions. To add Transitions, do the following:

1. In the left pane where all slides are shown in a vertical row, select the Slides tab.
2. Select one or more slides in the pane for which you want the desired transition.
3. On the Animations tab in the ribbon, choose a transition effect from the Transition to This Slide group.

You can optionally add Sound and change the speed of the transition using the drop-downs in the ribbon to the right as shown above. If you want to remove the transitions you have added, just select the slides and choose No Transition (first one) from the list.

Add Motion Path Animation

To make a graphic object move in a certain path on the slide, use Motion Path animation. This works best for graphic images with transparent backgrounds, as the graphic moves across other elements on the slide. To add Motion Path animation to an object, do the following:

1. Drag the object you wish to animate to its starting position.
2. Click to select the object.
3. Open the Animation task pane, as described earlier.
4. Select Add Effect > Motion Paths > Draw Custom Path > Scribble. The mouse pointer becomes like a pen.
5. Draw the desired animation path, starting at the object, and click where it should stop moving.

You can also check out a gallery of preset motion paths by selecting the More Motion Paths… menu item.

Add Animated Clip Art

You can also check out free animated clip art graphics on the web. The Clip Art section on Office Online has a huge library of clip art, including animations. You can filter your search at the bottom to find only animations related to your search term. In this way, you can get some cool free animations that are ready to be added to your presentations. Another website to check out animation clip art is Animation Library.

Do your presentations come alive after adding animation? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In this article, let us look at two online guides to check your illness symptoms online, which are extremely easy to use and provide information about probable causes.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to stress that these guides should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. It is better that you use these tools as a supplementary resource to get more information, while you may be waiting for your doctor’s appointment, or to learn more about certain illnesses.

Check Symptoms Online With WebMD Symptom Checker

Web MD Symptom Checker is an easy to use interactive tool, where you select specific symptoms and it identifies possible causes.

You start by selecting your gender and age, after which you can specify the symptoms in three ways in the left panel:

• You can identify the symptom by zooming in on the affected body part in the interactive map of the human body on the left.
• You can select from a list of 76 possible symptoms organized in an alphabetical list and a common symptoms list.
• You can search for symptoms using the search box.

If applicable, you can select and add more symptoms. Once you identify the symptoms, the Symptom Checker shows you a list of possible conditions that may be the cause of them. You can check more about any possible condition right within the Symptom Checker.

For each condition, Symptom Checker provides you with an overview, a list of all symptoms associated with that condition, and related articles and videos on the WebMD website.

Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker

Use this guide to discover the most common causes of the most common symptoms. The Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker takes a different approach to isolating possible conditions than the WebMD version.

You first select between Adult and Child symptoms on the first page. For Adults, there are 28 common symptoms listed. After you choose one kind of symptom, the next page lets you select related factors depending upon the selected symptom:

• Details such as persistent/intermittent, started suddenly/gradually, etc.
• Whether it affects both pairs of hands/legs/etc.
• Details of the pain – duration, pattern, severity, location
• Trigger factors such as injury, repetitive use, stress, change in sleeping pattern, etc.
• Relieving factors such as medication, rest
• Accompanying symptoms associated with the selected symptom

Note that this page is specific and different for each of the 28 symptoms listed in the first page. The questions on this page are similar to what a doctor would ask you after you tell him about a symptom. So the process actually feels similar to an actual diagnosis!

After you make the appropriate selections on this page, the next one gives you possible causes of the symptoms. Here, you can see all associated factors or symptoms related to this condition.

Clicking on the condition takes you to the main page for it on the Mayo Clinic website. Here, you will find a wealth of information and resources such as description, causes, risk factors, tests and diagnosis, treatment and drugs, home and alternative remedies, prevention, etc.

For more health-related articles, check out our health category.

Did you find these tools useful? Any other online illness guide that you prefer? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Needless to say, all free personality tests should be taken with a grain of salt, which is to say, not very seriously, and certainly not as a replacement for professional psychologists. With that disclaimer out of the way, we can now present our hand-picked selection of the Top 8 Websites with cool tests that measure your Personality Traits!

#1: Signal Patterns Big Five Test

The Big Five is the leading industry personality model, shown to work across different cultures, geographies, and languages. It is the model most used in psychology and by human resource professionals. In this model, the personality attributes of a person are “measured” in five traits: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness/Intellect. The Signal Patterns test extends the model to 45 facets, each mixing two of the Big 5 traits.

The free personality test takes about 10 minutes and you get a nice visual representation of the results. You can also take this test as an application on Facebook or iPhone. From here, you can also take the Parenting Style test to find out what kind of a parent you are.

#2: Human Metrics MBTI Test

The MBTI is the precursor to the Big Five and remains the most widely administered personality test, with about 2 million tests taken every year. This is the granddaddy of all personality tests! According to the MBTI, all people are classified using four criteria: Extroversion – Introversion, Sensing – iNtuition, Thinking – Feeling, and Judging – Perceiving. Your “type” is then made up of four alphabets depending upon your score in these four criteria, for example ESFP or INTP.

There is a lot of typology information as well as several other tests available on the web, including websites devoted exclusively to each of the sixteen MBTI personality types. The Myers-Briggs Foundation site is the authentic source for further information.

#3: The Big Five Test

This site has a free personality test based on 45 questions from the Big Five Inventory, with more background information provided here.

Rate yourself on a 5 point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree to discover your inclination on five personality dimensions.

#4: Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) is closely related to the MBTI, and uses four temperaments extended to eight roles to model your personality. KTS is also a popular assessment test, taken by 40 million people across universities and companies worldwide. The site requires a free registration to take the KTS-II test.

Find out if you are an Artisan, Guardian, Idealist or Rationalist with this test. Wikipedia provides further information about KTS, including a comparison with MBTI.

#5: The Color Quiz

Whether you agree with the results of this color quiz or not, this is surely a fun quiz to take! Simply go on choosing the color you like the most, in a two step process.

In the results, you get an assessment of your existing situation, stress sources, restrained characteristics, desired objective, and actual problem.

#6: TESTdex Personality & Intelligence Tests

This site offers a large variety of personality tests. You can choose from the Big Five, Jungian, Enneagram, Brain Hemisphere, and others.

The nice thing about this site is you can choose your test based on how much time you wish to spend, as you know the number of questions in each test beforehand. Apart from personality tests, you will also find a handful of Intelligence, Amusing, and Compatibility tests here.

#7: Queendom: Land of Tests

Queendom is a website maintained by a company providing psychometric services and psychological assessments. There are tests for everything under the sun on this website – Personality, Love, Health, IQ, Career, etc. Whether you are looking for serious tests for career or relationships, or fun tests for trivia, you will find them here.

Beyond the many tests that make this an attractive site, you will also find that there is an active community, articles, and advice related to all aspects of our life.

#8: Youniverse

This website is run by Imagini, a UK startup, to promote their VisualDNA concept. You can take a series of tests for Personality, Movies, Love, etc. in all of which you choose the best picture that matches a concept like my kind of bedroom, vacation, excitement, etc. It may not offer much psychological insight, but is a pleasant and interesting way to take quizzes.

You need to register with the site to see your results. More than 15 million people have taken the VisualDNA test, which Imagini uses to sell VisualDNA Shops widgets for blog and website affiliate sales.

Want more? See How to Have Fun with Online Personality Quizzes and more fun personality quizzes we covered earlier.

Did you enjoy taking tests on these sites? Any favorite site you like that we missed? Share it with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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With the freeware version of LiveBrush, you can export your drawings as PNG files. With the $10 paid version, you can export vector files for professional use.

The Interface

While LiveBrush is easy to use, there are no tool-tips to help you get familiar with the interface. In order to get comfortable using LiveBrush, we must first understand the various interface controls.

The Project Bar at the top shows the current project and brush style. It also has buttons for LiveBrush app settings, and saving the project.

The Styles Panel at the top right is the key place where you select brush styles with which to draw. You can create new styles, import and export styles, or rearrange their order.

The most interesting thing however, is that you can select multiple brush styles to draw. It is fun letting your imagination go wild experimenting with different brush styles! It is also useful to preview a style before using it, using the “eye” button.

The different Tools in LiveBrush are shown in a vertical bar at the top right:

• Brush: the main drawing tool. This is a motion-enabled “live brush” as it responds to the speed of your mouse gestures.
• Pen: used to add “points” to previously drawn lines. These points are used as control points for transforming lines.
• Transform: used to transform layers or line points.
• Bucket: standard solid color fill tool.
• Sample: color picker tool.

The Tool Settings panel displays settings for the currently selected tool. For the Brush tool, it provides access to three kinds of settings:

• Brush Behavior: specifies brush response to mouse movements (velocity, friction) and when decorations are attached
• Brush Line: specifies how the line looks at each point, such as width, stroke type, angle, opacity, and color
• Brush Decoration: settings for the graphics attached to your lines in different brush styles

For the Transform tool, the Tool Settings panel gives access to transformation properties for the currently selected line points or layer.

At the bottom is the standard Layers panel to work with layers. You can duplicate, rearrange, remove, transform and flatten layers using this panel.

Drawing and Editing

Drawing is easy! Just select a brush style and draw. Apart from some basic styles, you will find floral, ink splats, fractal, light, smoke, and ribbon styles of brushes. Experiment with different brush behaviors – velocity and friction settings. Try out different Line and Decoration settings.

All graphics are organized in Layers. Use the Layers panel to remove, flatten, or change colors of layers. Click the Transform tool after you’ve drawn a few lines, select a layer, and see how you can move, rotate or resize layers.

Import and Export

Livebrush encourages you to share your drawings with the community. The Livebrush forum is a great place to check out art that others have created. Here is an example from the Livebrush photostream on Flickr:

The File > Import and File > Export menus let you import and export different parts of Livebrush projects such as the whole image, individual layers, brush styles, or a Deco list. New brush styles (Typography, Geometry, etc) and decorations are regularly added to the community, so make sure you check them out to import and use them in your drawings.

Did you like using Livebrush? Share your creations (and experiments) with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Zooloo consists of the following components that you can use to design your own portal website for free:

• zSocial: Social networking with Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter with single status update across all networks
• Dashboard: Personalized dashboard for news, photos, events, email, etc.
• Site Creator: Website and blog builder with themes and widgets
• Privacy Manager: Control who sees which parts of your website
• Photos/Videos: Online photo organizer and video library
• Calendar: Calendar, address book, reminders and to-do lists
• Entertainment & Shopping: Customized online entertainment for music, movies, etc. and favorite shopping sites

Homepage with Social Networking

The homepage has a search box at the top, zStatus and zSocial on the main page, and widgets on the right to upload photos, access email, calendar and your blog.

zStatus is a status update box from where you can update your status across Zooloo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Below that is zSocial, where you can interact with these social networks. Clicking the tab each network shows relevant sub-headings: for example, Facebook lets you choose between News Feed, Status Updates, Photos, Wall & Friends.

You can choose the background of your home page from several themes.

Your Dashboard

You pick and choose widgets to create your personalized dashboard. The dashboard is organized with tabs at the top, so you can create multiple tabs for different areas of interest. Clicking Add Widgets opens up a gallery of widgets that you can drag and drop to any tab on your dashboard. Widgets that need access to your login or profile need to be customized from the Options button on that widget.

The widget gallery is quite impressive – some of the popular types include:

• Social Tools – Email, Social Networks, Photo-sharing, etc.
• News Feeds – CNN, New York Times, etc.
• Entertainment – Last.fm, iTunes Media

You can see the list of widgets available in Zooloo here. From within your dashboard, you can listen to podcasts and watch videos without leaving your site. You can rearrange widgets with drag and drop and customize the theme. Your dashboard is private, so nobody else sees it at any time.

Build Your Zooloo Website

With a free Zooloo account, you get a yourname.zooloo.com website for free. Your website includes profile, photo, video, graffiti, blog, and three custom pages. With a $30 annual subscription for Zooloo Plus, you can use it with your own domain name and some extras.

The zCreator website builder is very easy to use. You can choose from different layouts and themes for your website. You add content placeholders by drag and drop and fill them with the text and images to build your website.

Each page of your website is private by default. You can choose to share individual pages, photo albums, and videos publicly, or with specific friends on Zooloo. The privacy settings are easy to use and offer granular control over who sees what on your website.

Blogging and Graffiti

Zooloo also offers a simple interface to add a blog to your website. The blogging service supports categories, comments, and photos/videos. You can also import your blog from Blogger.

Graffiti is Zooloo’s social bookmarking or clipping service. Using a bookmarklet from any browser, you can quickly clip a link, photo, or video on your Graffiti page. Graffiti posts also have comments so you can comment on your friends Graffiti items.

More About Zooloo

Zooloo is an easy-to-use, attractive option for non-geeks to have their own website and a central place for social networking and infotainment. The owners of the site say that they are not competing with established social networks like Facebook, but complementing them. There are already over 20,000 users of Zooloo from each state in the US and 76 countries. Users are buying from within their shopping malls inside Zooloo using PayPal. There are plans for an iPhone application as well.

Will you try out Zooloo or recommend it to someone? Do you prefer any other free website/dashboard service? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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LAlarm is a free laptop security alarming software. It has several different alarms to help protect your laptop, the most important of them being the Theft Alarm.

Install LAlarm

Download and install the free laptop security software here. LAlarm is free for personal use, and version 4.0 works with Windows Vista, XP (SP2 or SP3). On Windows 7, you can try the latest beta version 5.0. The download is less than 1MB, and the setup program looks the same as the main program that you launch after installation.

LAlarm runs as a background process when you start your laptop. In my tests, it took up an insignificant 7.5MB of memory, so you probably won’t even notice that it is running.

Improve Laptop Security and Protect Against Theft

Securing your laptop is simple and can be done in two ways:

1. If your laptop is connected to a power outlet, simply lock it with the Win+L key shortcut

2. If there is no power outlet available:

a) Use a neck-strap or USB extension cord with any old flash drive and insert it into a USB port

b) Tie the neck-strap or cord to a firm table

c) Lock the laptop with the Win+L shortcut

The LAlarm website shows an example of how this is done:

That’s it. Now, when someone attempts to steal your laptop, either the power cord or the USB flash drive will get disconnected from the laptop. This triggers the Theft Alarm, and the thief will get a nasty shock because the laptop will emit a loud siren like a car alarm. In my testing, I was worried about neighbors rushing to see what was happening! The alarm stops only when you unlock the laptop by entering your login credentials.

For additional laptop security, you can also enable the Inattention Alarm in the Options > Alarm tab. This will trigger if there is a specified period of inactivity on your laptop in unsafe zones. Let’s see what “unsafe zones” are next.

Restrict Laptop Use To A Safe Area

You can use IP addresses to define “Safe Zones” in which your laptop is considered safe. If anyone tries to use it outside the pre-defined safe zones, it triggers the Perimeter Alarm.

The Inattention Alarm also makes use of these zones, so that alarms don’t go off when you take a lunch break at work.

Email and SMS Alerts

After installation, one of the first things you probably want to do is setup email alerts for the alarms, for which you can only use a Gmail account and need to supply your Gmail password. As this is software installed locally on your laptop, you need not be concerned about supplying your Gmail password. LAlarm sends you a test email to verify that the email is working properly.

You can also configure SMS alerts to your mobile phone using Email-to-SMS gateways. Note that these alerts will work only if there is an Internet connection present at the time of laptop theft.

Automatically Destroy Data In Case Of Theft

In case your laptop does get stolen, you can configure LAlarm to automatically destroy pre-defined data folders. You set these via the Options > Destruction tab.

In addition to destroying data, you can also run any custom programs you want to execute in case of theft from the Options > Theft Response tab.

Battery and Disk Protection Alarms

LAlarm also has Disk and Battery protection to help you maximize your laptop battery life and warn you of impending hard disk failure. The battery alarm is triggered at low battery levels that you can customize, and works with Li-ion type batteries.

Doesn’t this laptop security software sound too good to be free? Will you use it to protect your laptop against theft? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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You can’t upgrade from 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit without doing a fresh “clean” install, which requires you to reinstall all applications from scratch. Therefore, you need to decide on either 32-bit or 64-bit before you install Windows 7.

While I recommend you go with 64-bit, read through this article to make an informed decision.

Background: What is 32-bit and 64-bit?

32-bit and 64-bit are computer architectures that specify the length of data types and addresses that are supported. What this means for the average user is how much memory can be used effectively and how powerful the number-crunching capacity of the CPU is.

Since Windows XP was originally only released as a 32-bit operating system, and because older hardware have 32-bit device drivers, application development on the Windows platform has been slow in moving to 64-bit. However, after both Windows XP and Vista were released in 64-bit, Microsoft is now pushing 64-bit strongly, and you can expect application developers to take advantage of 64-bit computing soon.

Should You Buy 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7?

Fortunately, you do not need to worry about all this when purchasing a computer or Windows 7. If you are buying a new PC from a vendor, it will ship with 64-bit Windows pre-installed if the configuration supports 64-bit. If you buy retail boxed versions of Windows 7, they will include both 32-bit and 64-bit editions, except for the Home Basic edition.

Advantages of 64-bit

There are several benefits of going to Windows 7 64-bit:

• With 32-bit Windows, you can use a maximum of 4GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 7 runs very fast with 4GB and you can upgrade your RAM to 8 or 16 GB later, making your system future-proof.
• A 32-bit OS can theoretically use up to 4 GB of RAM, but 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 see a maximum of 3.12 GB. With 64-bit Windows 7, you can use the full 4GB RAM.
• You get better security with 64-bit Windows. All 64-bit device drivers are digitally signed, which means you will not have random crashes. You also get more advanced security features like Kernel Patch Protection with 64-bit Windows 7.
• Since 64-bit systems process more information and support greater RAM, Windows 7 is more responsive when you are running complex applications or many applications simultaneously. If you use graphics applications like Photoshop, video editing, games, CAD, etc., you should go 64-bit.
• Not all applications have 64-bit versions that take advantage of the 64-bit architecture, but you can expect more of them after Windows 7 goes mainstream. Meanwhile, most 32-bit applications work fine under 64-bit Windows. If any of them don’t for some reason, you can reasonably expect the application developers to fix any issues, because a lot of people will be running 64-bit Windows.

Check If Your PC Supports 64-Bit Windows 7

If you have bought or upgraded your computer in the past couple of years, with an Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent/higher processor, your PC is already equipped to run 64-bit Windows 7. If you want to make sure, you can do any of the following:

• If you are running 32-bit Windows Vista, go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Performance Information and Tools. Click View and print details. In the System section, you can see whether your PC is 64-bit capable.
• You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to find out if your system can run 64-bit Windows 7.
• Check the Windows 7 Compatibility Center to see if your devices have 64-bit drivers.

When You Should Use 32-bit

There are some situations in which you are better off using 32-bit Windows 7:

• If you use only 2GB of RAM, and do not plan to upgrade anytime soon. To really take advantage of 64-bit Windows 7, you need minimum 4GB RAM.
• You have legacy devices like scanners and printers that do not have 64-bit device drivers. 32-bit drivers are not supported under 64-bit Windows 7, so you should make sure all the devices you need to use are compatible with 64-bit.
• You run old 16-bit applications that were developed for Windows 3.1 or DOS. These won’t run under 64-bit Windows.

Did this post clear your doubts about 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions? Is your system ready for 64-bit Windows 7? Feel free to share and ask any questions in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library

Listed by PC Magazine as one of the Top 100 Websites of 2009, this site is a treasure trove of free public domain sheet music, as well as a thriving community of music lovers. There are over 39,000 scores for 18,000+ works and thousands are being added every month. You will find multiple versions of sheets for popular works, all available for download as PDF files. While some PDFs are typeset using software and are clearer, some are scanned versions.

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) or Petrucci Music Library has its own forum where you can participate in general music discussion, send score requests, etc. You can also follow the IMSLP on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Suffice it to say that if the sheet music of the classical work you’re looking for is not available here, you’re probably a professional musician who should not be looking for free websites to download sheet music!

The Choral Wiki (CPDL)

The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), specializes in choral music and has over 10,000 different works. Apart from scores, you can find lyrics, translations, and information about composers. Most scores are available as downloadable PDF files, some are also accompanied by MIDI files, while others are linked to clearly marked external websites.

CPDL supports advanced search so that you can search scores by title, composer, period, genre, voicing, and even lyrics. You can also browse in different ways such as alphabetically, by category, by composer, etc. CPDL is a community driven website, with over 500 contributors, so you can add your own scores and contribute to it.

Mutopia

Mutopia offers free sheet music to print for over 1600 classical works. You will find all the popular composers like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart and works for all types of instruments like Piano, Violin, Guitar, Cello and Organ. You can browse by Instrument, Composer, or Style. The Advanced Search is very impressive, allowing you to search using various filters.

Again, this is a volunteer-driven project, using the LilyPond software to create beautiful A4 or Legal sized sheets. For each work, you get PDF or PostScript files as well as MIDI files, along with a preview image and basic information about the musical work.

Free Sheet Music.Net

This site is a combination of free sheet music hosted within the site and a searchable directory of links to other websites for sheet music. I suggest you browse the sheet music downloads within that site here, rather than experimenting with the search or clicking the advertisements.

The number of sheet music downloads is quite limited. The reason this website was worth including in this list is because of the free articles available here. This assorted collection of articles ranges from beginner guides for different instruments to information about sheet music, instruments, etc.

Free Scores

Free Scores has almost 15,000 free sheet music scores available for download as PDF files. Their search is quite impressive, as you can search in many different ways: by instruments, composers, etc. For example, within works for Piano, you can search by style (genre), and instrumentation (piano solo, or with specific other instruments). Many music sheets have accompanying MIDI or MP3 files.

If you are a composer or musician, you can register for free on the site to distribute your own music. While most of the sheet music on the site is classical and in public domain, some contemporary composers have added their own music to this site for sharing.

ABC Music.Net

This is a rare website that offers free piano sheet music downloads for popular modern tunes. You will find 270+ tunes from the Beatles to Celine Dion and Justin Timberlake. You can browse alphabetically, or by search by artist or song name. The sheets are clear PDF files, downloaded as .ZIP archives. You can register to become a member and upload your contributions.

ABC Music has their own Twitter account and Facebook fan page as well, but unfortunately there don’t seem to be any updates to the site or these accounts since May ‘09. If you are interested in getting sheets for modern songs, grab it from here while it lasts.

Did we miss any quality site for free sheet music that is your favorite? Did you get the sheets for the works you were looking for? Do tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Zakta differs from traditional search engines in these key areas:

• Personalize and edit your search results
• Automatically save your search results
• Share your saved search results as a social network search with others as Guides
• Collaborate on a search with family or colleagues, just like you do on shared documents

If you are searching for quick factoids of information, you are better served by traditional search engines. However, if you’re planning a vacation or trip, researching a health ailment, exploring the best affordable university to get a degree, or similar broad topics, Zakta shines by beating the thousands of irrelevant links you get in Google or Bing.

The How Zakta Can Help page details the different benefits of Zakta for teachers, students, travelers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. You can use Zakta as a casual surfer, but to get access to all the features, you need to register.

Ready? Let’s take Zakta for a spin and explore its features.

Organized Search Results

A search for “swine flu” quickly led me to choose the “2009 flu pandemic” organized set of results discarding the “1976 swine flu outbreak”. The search results are organized into sections, listed on the left. In this case, we see Reference, Web Sites, Books and Articles, etc. for swine flu. Observe that we also see sections of Symptoms, Prevention, and Treatment, as if Zakta “knows” that this is a medical condition.

Zakta “knows” about 3 million such informational topics already, so you will find sections meaningful to your search for every search term.

Personalized Search: Editing Results

There are many useful things you can do with the search results. Roll over your mouse over any result to get a mini-toolbar of actions you can perform on that result.

Delete results you don’t want to see again, use drag and drop to reorder results, and annotate or recommend a result. The personal ClipPad is your clipboard that remembers clipped results across related searches.

Share your results as a Guide

You can share your personalized results to create and publish a Zakta Guide. You can choose the sections to include, apply predefined templates, and include related searches as you wish. Once you create a guide, you can easily link to it, share it over email or on any social network. Your guide is shown to other Zakta users, who can recommend it. You can also invite your trusted friends or colleagues to collaborate on a Guide. Finally, a widget lets you embed your guide on your website or blog. You can also create a guide from scratch using the Guide Creator.

While Zakta is still in Beta, hundreds of Guides have already been developed by its users. From the Guides page, you can see popular guides, recently updated guides, or browse through them by subject, title, etc. Published Guides are even accessible from within Facebook with the Zakta Guides for Facebook app.

Zakta Tools: Search Packs and Firefox Plugin

The Zakta Firefox plugin allows you to clip anything from any web page directly to your Zakta ClipPad or Guide. Zakta SearchPacks give you access to a plethora of web search engines in tabs for different types of searches. SearchPacks are available for Web, News, Blogs, Discussions, Images, Videos and Health. For example, the Web SearchPack gives you access to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.

There are social networking search features built into Zakta as well, if you wish to build a trusted network of friends and keep yourself up-to-date with new search results or guides in your areas of interest.

Will you try out Zakta? Do you find it better for researching topics? We would love to hear your feedback in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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If you are like me, you want to download and backup your Facebook data just in case. Here is a simple way to backup and archive your Facebook information using the ArchiveFacebook Firefox extension.

Archive Facebook is an experimental Firefox extension that allows you to backup Facebook data on your local hard drive. You can browse your archive as if it were your local copy of Facebook. Facebook does not let you upload this data in any way, so you cannot use it for restoring anything in case you delete your data or account in Facebook.

Archive Facebook backs up the following from your Facebook profile:

• Photos
• Messages
• Activity Stream
• Friends List
• Notes
• Events
• Groups
• Info

Note that your friends activity or data is not included in your archive. Also, if you prefer using a browser other than Firefox, you can use this extension by installing Firefox just to backup Facebook data, and then uninstall Firefox. Your backup will be usable from other browsers as well (see last section below).

Disable or Uninstall Scrapbook

Archive Facebook causes instability if the Scrapbook Firefox extension is installed. You should not run both of them simultaneously, so if you have installed Scrapbook, disable or uninstall it.

Get a Facebook Username

As of version 1.0, Archive Facebook works only if you have a vanity URL for your Facebook profile. If you don’t already have one, get a Facebook username for your account here. Once you can access your Facebook via http://www.facebook.com/your_name you are all set.

Install the Extension

To get started, install the Archive Facebook extension from the Mozilla Firefox Addons gallery. This is an experimental extension, so you will need to enable the option to allow you to download and install it.

After restarting Firefox, you should see a new menu item “ArchiveFB” in Firefox between the Bookmarks and the Tools menu.

Backup and Archive

Login to your Facebook account. You should be able to browse in Facebook before you start the archive process.

Go to ArchiveFB > Show in Sidebar and open the sidebar.

While you are seeing Facebook open in your browser, select ArchiveFB > Archive. You will automatically get redirected to your Facebook profile page and see the following dialog box:

Select OK to start the backup process. Cancel will not start any operation. Once you start the archive process, ArchiveFB begins to retrieve your Facebook stream in reverse chronological order. You will see a series of dialog boxes displaying how far back it has progressed in the retrieval process.

If you select Cancel on any of these dialog boxes, your archive will extend back in time only till that date and time stamp.

Once the retrieval process is complete, ArchiveFB will start downloading your Facebook data to create your backup archive.

The process may take several hours depending upon the speed of your connection and how long and extensively you’ve used Facebook.

Be patient, but if you find that the process is stuck on one particular item in the list, click Pause and then Start to resume. I found that this trick worked when ArchiveFB seemed to get stuck on a few items in the list.

Once the backup and archive operation is complete, you can see a new entry in the sidebar “Facebook | username date” with your username and the current date. This indicates that the operation was successful.

Browsing Your Archive

Just like any data backup software, you can have multiple sets of your Facebook archive made at different points in time, which will all appear in your ArchiveFB sidebar. Clicking on any of the entries in the sidebar browses that archive set, starting at your profile page.

Observe the browser address bar URLs when browsing your Facebook profile archive. It will show “file://” instead of “http://” indicating that you are browsing a local copy on your hard disk. You should be able to view your photos, friends list, notes, etc. from within your local copy.

You will see an Annotation Bar at the bottom of the browser. It has highlighting and annotation tools with which you can make notes about any of the items in your Facebook archive.

For Advanced Users and Other Browsers

ArchiveFB stores the copy of your Facebook data within your Firefox profile by default. You will find an ArchiveFB folder created inside your Firefox profile folder, where the archives created by this extension are stored.

What if you normally use a different browser? In the ArchiveFB sidebar, go to Tools > Options. In the Options dialog, go to the Organize tab. In the Location to Store Data, you can specify a different location for your archive.

From any archive set, you can open the “index.html” file to open and browse your Facebook archive data from within any browser.

Before you run off to backup your Facebook data, you might also want to check out our popular Facebook Hack Codes and Privacy Tips!

Were you able to backup your Facebook data? Feel free to share your experience in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Of course, that is just one scenario where screencasts are useful. Some other popular examples where screencasts are used include:

• Showing off your skills at using Photoshop or some other complex app
• Creating “How To” videos for use in your blog posts
• Creating e-Learning tutorials

How to Create Screencasts With Screenr

Screenr makes creating and sharing screencasts very simple. You need to have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your system and the Java plugin enabled in your browser, but Screenr itself is a web app so you don’t need to install it. Screenr will prompt you to automatically install Java if you don’t have it, hence there is no need to install it separately beforehand.

Screenr works on both PCs and Macs. Screencasts are created in high-definition Flash format so they can be played everywhere on the web, including on iPhones. You can also use your microphone to record your voice during the screencast. Screenr is used exclusively with Twitter and all screencasts are public. For other options, you should check out 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials.

Create Your Screencast

For the sake of this article, let’s say I want to create a screencast of a walkthrough of the new Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software.

Go to Screenr and login directly with Twitter using OAuth. Clicking the Record your screencast now! button loads the recorder. You can record screencasts of up to 5 minutes length.

In the recorder, you can select the audio option for your screencast. For our example, I minimized the browser window, and loaded the Security Essentials window. I then resized the recorder window to fit the Security Essentials window. This optimizes the screencast for clarity as well as download size.

After clicking the red Record button, I viewed all the tabs in the Security Essentials app, as if I were performing a walkthrough. All my actions are automatically recorded. When I was finished, I clicked Done.

Publish and Share Your Screencast

When you are finished, you are automatically taken to the Screenr website, where you can preview, describe, publish, and share your screencast. You have the option of tweeting your screencast automatically or do it separately. Once you publish, you can see Screenr making web and iPhone versions of your screencast and uploading them.

The Share section on the right lets you embed your screencast on a blog, upload it to YouTube, download an mp4 version, or delete it from your profile. Here is the sample screencast I created using Screenr:

When you share screencasts on Twitter via Screenr, users who view your screencast can share and comment on them. They can ReTweet your screencast to share it with others, and their comments are sent to you as Twitter @Replies.

Will you use Screenr for your screencasting needs? Did you find it easy to use? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The Unique People Focus

While handling all your email and social networking communication from one place is a no-brainer, there is a tremendous benefit of using Threadsy that is not readily apparent before you use it. Imagine you’re responding to a friend or colleague’s email discussing a specific topic. With your regular webmail, you will simply respond to the topic being discussed in the email, right?

Now, in Threadsy, while you are replying to her via email, you see her Facebook status or recent tweet – “Just got tickets for the U2 concert!” – and you just might add something to your email. Threadsy makes this possible via the automatic Profile View, which you shall see below. In this way, Threadsy lets you focus on people, not the medium of communication you or they might prefer. You don’t miss a person’s recent status updates just because you don’t use Facebook or Twitter often enough.

The Integrated View

Threadsy keeps it simple by showing all your email and social networking communication in two columns or streams. The Inbound column has messages specifically addressed to you. This includes Email, Twitter @replies and Direct Messages, and your Facebook Inbox. The Unbound column shows feeds that you follow, such as your Twitter stream and Facebook friends’ status updates. You can adjust the width of the Unbound column using the arrow sliders in between the two panes.

Note that Threadsy is not a Personal Information Manager. If you want calendar, notes, RSS feeds, etc. all in one place, check out Life.io. Threadsy focuses on communication and excels by keeping it simple. At present, you need to add a webmail account to use Threadsy, so for example, you can’t use it with just your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Adding Accounts

Adding your email and social networking accounts is as easy as pie, but you do need to provide your login credentials to Threadsy. Twitter OAuth is coming soon and you can use Facebook connect after you have logged in. For webmail accounts, Threadsy supports AOL, Gmail (and Google Apps), Hotmail and Yahoo! US.

Inbound: What’s Sent To You

The Inbound column shows all your messages in a chronological sequence, whether they are email, Twitter replies, or Facebook messages. Icons at the right of each message help you quickly identify the type of message. You can quickly filter messages by type using the tabs at the top for your webmail, Facebook, and Twitter.

Simply hovering your mouse over a message without actually opening it gives you options to quickly reply, retweet, delete, favorite or archive it. Click an email or Facebook message to open and read it.

Unbound: What You’re Following

The Unbound column displays your Twitter and Facebook feeds also in chronological sequence. You can filter the stream using the Facebook or Twitter tabs at the top. You can post your own Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets from within the box at the top.

The Chat tab in the Unbound column allows you to use Instant Messaging with your IM contacts.

Twitter Stream

The Twitter stream in the Unbound column shows pictures and videos inline. This allows you to play videos without leaving Threadsy.

Hovering your mouse over a tweet brings up quick Reply, ReTweet, and Favorite buttons.

Facebook Feed

Like many desktop clients, Threadsy has inbuilt support for interacting with your Facebook stream – without installing anything. You can like items, view comments and enter your own comments.

View Profiles Automatically

Whenever you click on a tweet or view an email message, Threadsy shows you a profile snapshot of the person in the right Unbound column. I found it a quick and easy way to connect with people on other networks. For example, here is a profile view of Kristen, one of our new writers at MakeUseOf:

Threadsy collects information from dozens of sites; and shows you a bio, recent photos, and recent status updates on Facebook and Twitter. This is incredibly useful as it provides the context for you to respond appropriately to the person. You can directly jump to the person’s profile on any of the listed networks to connect.

Want to start using Threadsy right away? Click this link to get an instant invite, exclusively for MakeUseOf readers. Don’t forget to give us your feedback in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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It is a cool new “Relationship Manager” that recently launched publicly in beta. Gist is not for casual users, rather, it’s a one-of-its-kind service for professional users that bridges key gaps between other popular services. For personal use, you should checkout Life.IO.

What is Gist?

Gist aims to help you control information overload by focusing on people and companies that are important to you. First, Gist gets information from your inbox and social networking accounts to build a database of your network. It then monitors the web for information about the people and companies in your network. Using the concept of “importance”, it then provides customizable views of people and companies, showing you news, blog posts, tweets, etc. for each of them. Your Dashboard becomes a “intelligent reader” thus giving you insight into critical updates that are important to you.

Get Started By Connecting Accounts

Gist allows you to connect a variety of sources using built-in business networking techniques to build your network database. At present, you can integrate your email from Outlook, Gmail or any service that supports IMAP. Your professional contacts can come from LinkedIn, Salesforce, or any CSV file. Note that Gist doesn’t connect with LinkedIn at present, hence you need to export and import your LinkedIn contacts.

Social networking contacts can be imported from Facebook and Twitter. Gist also offers an Outlook plug-in so that you can use it from within Outlook. To use Gist effectively, you will need to personalize it as described later in this article, but first let’s look at the powerful views Gist offers.

Dashboard View

The Dashboard is your top-level view to get all the news about your network. It is a RSS news feed reader, Twitter client, and Calendar rolled into one, with optional widgets showing shared links and attachments received in your email inbox.

You can customize the Dashboard to show Recent News, or news from people you’ve recently contacted or added. Information displayed can be filtered by date, content source, importance and tags. You can search to quickly find people, companies, attachments, or shared links.

You can also share any information item from your Dashboard to Facebook or Twitter. In this way, Gist goes beyond an “intelligent reader” to being a “intelligent networking” tool.

People and Companies View

The People and Companies tabs organize your contacts according to importance. It shows your email history and stats, the last time you were in contact, number of contacts from a company, and so on, for each person and company in your network.

You can search to find and manage contacts, or add new contacts manually. You can sort the view using any of the column headers, and use tags to filter the view. For each person or company, you can edit their names, add tags, and adjust their importance. You can merge duplicates, and use multi-select to perform bulk operations. Finally, you can instruct Gist whether to Watch a person or contact for news updates.

Profile View

Gist Profile pages are a central place to find out everything about the people and companies in your network. Gist scans your email accounts, calendars, contact databases such as LinkedIn, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to create unified profiles for each person or company. Gist is continuously searching for new information about your contacts even when you’re not using it.

The What’s New section pulls blog posts, tweets, and news from thousands of sources with sharing and filtering tools. You can flag items, mark them as read, share items via email, Facebook, or Twitter, or dismiss them as not relevant. The right-hand side shows searchable widgets such as aggregated conversations, shared links and attachments. Shared Contacts shows related people with links to their profiles. There is even a Google Search widget pre-populated with search results that can be customized with your own search term.

Profile information can be manually edited and updated. If the Gist profile doesn’t have it already, you can add a relevant image, website, phone number, address, and tags. The best way to organize your contacts is to use tags. Finally, a cool Dossier feature provides a printable version of a profile that you can use before meeting or communicating with a person.

Optimize To Get The Most Out Of Gist

After initially building your Gist contacts network, I recommend that you spend some time tweaking it for your needs. I found this necessary because:

• Gist may not recognize that the person from your LinkedIn network and your friend on Facebook are the same person. In these cases, you will need to Merge them.
• Similarly, Gist may not correctly associate Twitter handles with the contacts from your email inbox.
• Gmail has a rather unconventional approach of adding every email address you send email to, as a contact. To my dismay, this doesn’t work well with Gist, which imports all Gmail contacts. I ended up deleting tons of frivolous help@…, support@…, and info@… kind of “contacts”.
• You may not have had much interaction with influential people who are actually important to you. It appears that Gist’s ranking uses frequency of communication as a benchmark to assess importance, because of which you may need to manually adjust their importance.
• If your Facebook friends are primarily personal friends who work at companies that don’t really matter to you, you will need to either delete or lower their importance in Gist.
• Also, profiles may need to be edited to add individual websites, blog feeds and news sources so that you get relevant information.

Are you excited about Gist using as an intelligent networking tool? Did you like the post? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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There are several reasons why this may be a preferred way to use Twitter:

• Running a separate Twitter desktop client application (usually with Adobe AIR) takes up additional system resources, which can slowdown your system.
• Integrate Twitter smoothly in your workflow, since you don’t need to switch between the browser and an application.
• You don’t need to download anything and are always using the latest version automatically.
• If you wish, you can switch between different web apps easily and swiftly.
• Web apps provide some special features not available in common desktop apps.

Which web-based apps should you use? What are their unique features when compared to the common Twitter desktop clients? In this article, we will look at four Twitter web apps and highlight their unique features so that you can choose the right one to make use of.

HootSuite

HootSuite is an easy-to-use but powerful Twitter application. The interface is very flexible and you can create nice layouts just the way you want them. You can have multiple tabs, with each tab showing up to four columns of tweets. You can drag and drop columns and tabs, change width of columns, and set individual refresh intervals for each tab. Columns can be used for Groups, Mentions, DMs, and Searches just like other apps.

The unique features of HootSuite are:

• Co-workers can tweet from the same Twitter account
• You can track the number of clicks on the links you tweet
• You can schedule tweets for later
• You can feed any RSS/Atom feed to your Twitter account
• You can use Ping.fm with HootSuite to broadcast tweets to other networks
• The Hootlet is a bookmarklet for your browser toolbar to tweet about a web page

Brizzly

Brizzly is the newest web app for Twitter, at present in beta for which you can quickly get an invite just by signing up. It is extremely easy to use, has an uncluttered, clean look, and you will find yourself tweeting within minutes. You can use up to 5 Twitter accounts and create up to 5 groups.

Brizzly’s claim to fame is for the following:

• Inline view of pictures, maps, and videos from a variety of sources
• Save drafts of Tweets like just like email drafts
• Temporarily “mute” prolific tweeters to hide their updates in your stream
• Easily view or edit explanations of Twitter’s trending topics
• Keyboard shortcuts for power users
• Upload pictures directly via Brizzly and track their number of clicks

TwitHive

TwitHive is a different breed among these Twitter web apps. TwitHive uses the term “channels” to describe what essentially become columns once you create them. You can have a highly customized Twitter client because of the flexibility you have in defining channels.

A channel, or column, can be made up of Tweets, Groups, DMs, and Search. The Tweets column can additionally be filtered to display Conversations (tweets with an @reply), Questions, ReTweets, Links, or Keywords. In the example above, I have 3 columns set to display ReTweets, Tweets with Links, and a Search column for Facebook. Also, it is easy to track keyword or brand mentions with TwitHive.

Seesmic Web

Seesmic Desktop’s web-based cousin is not as powerful, but has a few nifty features you won’t find in its desktop version. It is easy to use and offers a choice of two different color schemes. At present, it does not support multiple Twitter accounts and does not allow you to create groups. While these features are just around the corner, Seesmic Web is an attractive option if you are following a limited number of people from a single account.

Seesmic Web has the following standout features:

• Gmail-like interface that lets you view large number of tweets instantly
• Inline previews of pictures, maps, and videos on mouseover
• Threaded DM conversation view (as shown below)
• Support for French, German, Chinese and Romanian languages

Did you find the post useful? Did we miss your favorite Twitter web-app? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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